


Created to Save You

by Rulerofthefakeempire



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Humour, Kissing, Love, M/M, Protective!Bucky, Protective!Steve, bucky pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5402147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rulerofthefakeempire/pseuds/Rulerofthefakeempire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And he was wearing those dumb sock suspender things. </p><p>Bucky didn’t know what they were called, but they were dumb and like suspenders, but for your socks. He could tell that he was wearing them because he had that really uncomfortable expression on his face, so either he’d forgotten to wear underwear or he was wearing the dumb sock suspender things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Created to Save You

And he was wearing those dumb sock suspender things.

 

Bucky didn’t know what they were called, but they were dumb and _like suspenders_ , but for your socks. He could tell that he was wearing them because he had that really uncomfortable expression on his face, so either he’d forgotten to wear underwear or he was wearing the dumb sock suspender things.

 

He wondered where you got them, the dumb sock suspender things; he’d never seen them in shops. Maybe they came with suits? Or maybe they were like graduation gifts? Like when you finally become someone fit to wear a nice suit and attend business meetings and the like you’re presented with the dumb sock suspender things like a badge or something.

 

He wouldn’t know.

 

He continued to stare quizzically at Steve’s ankles.

 

He should have, logically, been listening to whatever he was talking about, it was probably something important, something about someone attacking someone else and this being important because of a reason that he had forgotten and someone completely different hacking into something else, and he had no idea what this had to do with him or why he needed to care, but all he could think about was how much bigger Steve’s ankles had gotten.

 

He’d never noticed the ankles before; it was always the chest or his height, never his ankles, or his wrists, or his elbows. Well maybe his elbows, but he obviously hadn’t thought to deep into it to remember. He didn’t used to have ankles like that. He also didn’t used to have dumb sock suspender things.

 

Bucky took a bite of his toast, held it in his mouth and swung himself onto the fridge. The fridge had the best vantage point of the whole kitchen, even better the cupboards. He had checked. He ate some more his toast and crossed his legs, still looking at Steve’s ankles. He chewed thoughtfully.

 

“Bucky Barnes,” someone addressed formally and loudly and crossly from across the room. And it wasn’t Steve so he immediately started paying attention. “You get down off my fridge or so help me I’ll throw you out a window!”

 

Well. He could try.

 

It was Tony, Howard’s boy. They hadn’t even needed to be introduced; it was just that obvious. Bucky looked down at him and wondered if he was wearing the dumb sock suspender things too. Probably not, he was too flashy for something as mundane as that. He probably had tiny jet packs attached to the hems of his socks to keep them up. Bucky began to imagine them under his trousers, smiled and took another bite of his toast.

 

“Aw, lay off ‘im Tony.” It’s that assassin, the not Natasha one. Clint. Yeah, Clint, that’s his name. Cool Cat Clint. That’s what he introduced himself as; Natasha had cuffed him on the ear when he had. He smiled again. “It’s not like he’s gonna break it.” Cool Cat Clint was right, he wasn’t gonna break it. Why would he break it when it had the best vantage point in the kitchen? He ate some more of his toast. Tony huffed exactly the way that Howard used to.

 

He killed Howard.

 

That wasn’t important right now.

 

….

 

He was looking at him with that expression again. That ‘I’m not really sure who you are, but you know that my mom’s name is Sara and I have a strange urge to make sure you’re okay’ expression.

 

Bucky continued to clean his arm at the kitchen table. It’s hard with only one hand, but he liked to do it. The people who had kept him used to do everything for him, clean him, feed him, clothe him. He liked doing things all by himself like the big boy he was, made him feel competent and the like.

 

Steve always wanted to help. Bucky always says no.

 

He wasn’t wearing the dumb sock suspender things today; today he’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt that didn’t belong to him. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, had been for the past few minutes. He thought that Bucky hadn’t noticed him, probably still thought he was skinny and could do that sort of thing without being seen.

 

Idiot.

 

Bucky wanted to hug him for it, but he didn’t because Steve was always awkward when he touched him, thinking that he was overstepping some boundsthat nobody had ever said were there. Bucky let him have his worry, let him stew in his anxiety. Bucky didn’t care as long as he was safe. As long as he remained perfectly intact and didn’t die or take nose dives into the artic, Bucky didn’t care.

 

He cleaned his arm and didn’t look up.

 

….

 

He was weeping again.

 

He did that when he was scared. Not like when he stormed into places with guns and men just following orders, he wasn’t scared of them. But the moment that he was really scared, scared like he hadn’t been taught how to deal with, he would burst into tears. His mouth would turn down and tears would stream down his face. He could storm into a HYDRA facility no questions asked, but the moment that he see’s Bucky standing without his shirt since their fall he’s gone.

 

Shaking, all six foot of him, quivering with half suppressed sobs of horror and guilt and confusion. And he got this expression like he’d just watched one of his parents walk out on him forever and he didn’t know what to do with himself, but all he could think was that it was all his fault.

 

He thought it was his fault before he even knew what it was. It was his nature. He took too much on his shoulders. They might have been bigger than those he used to wear, but they weren’t invincible. Everything can break. The man had no idea how to prioritize, kept getting himself torn in all different directions, not knowing that he could only ever go in one.

 

Bucky watched from the sidelines, helping quietly from the shadows of Steve’s life. Until he wept.

 

And when he wept he was unsafe, which made his weeping something of Bucky’s concern. He didn’t like it when he was hurting, he had never liked it when he was hurting, so he tried his hardest to make it stop. Held him while he cried, let him trace the scars on his skin, allowed him to touch him. And they stood in the middle of Bucky’s room, holding tightly onto one another. And he couldn’t quite tell who was comforting who, who got more from it. His hand was in Steve’s hair, his arms around Bucky’s torso.

 

And Steve might have been just a little bit taller than he was now, but he would always be small to him. He might go out and fight the bad guys, and make a show, and wear tights and save the world, but Bucky knew he wasn’t made of titanium, wasn’t made to fight the fights he fought.

 

Bucky was the only one in this whole goddamn world who knew that he was just a boy with newspapers in his big ole’ combat boots.

 

….

 

He woke up in a haze of limbs and hair, and old t-shirts and beer. Neither of them could get drunk nowadays, but the taste was nice, and it was as normal as they could manage. Steve and him, sharing a sharing a six pack on a Friday night.

 

Tony, Howard’s boy, had offered them some whiskey from before the war, but the beer was good, the beer was nice. The beer was familiar.

 

He didn’t remember going to sleep, or how he got into Steve’s bed for that matter. He didn’t mind he wasn’t uncomfortable. This was good like the beer; it was the way it used to be.

 

They used to do more than this, when Steve was smaller and all his pieces fitted together so nicely. Steve didn’t think he remembered it, but he did, and he had been, honestly, offended that Steve thought he was capable of forgetting something like that.

 

He didn’t think he’d ever really forgotten about it, not that. He forgot Steve’s name, and what he looked like, forgot his birthday and his shirt size and his favorite flavor of ice cream, or that he even existed before. But he never really forgot what they were together, never forgot the feeling of some else’s hands on his skin, a pair of blue eyes he could never quite give an owner. He never forgot something forbidden, something that he both hated and loved at the same time. He never forgot that overwhelming feeling that he needed to protect this one thing with his life. He could never remember what that thing was, all he knew was that it was his and he needed desperately to keep it safe from harm.

 

And Steve still slept the same way. He’s shoulders might have been broader and his chest wider and his arms far more defined than they might once have been, but he still slept like a lion cub. All splayed out limbs, going in all directions, rolling and kicking in his sleep and gripping onto whatever he found to be in bed with him, whether it be human or pillow or stuffed bear. It didn’t bother Bucky. It even sort of comforted him, because nobody else would ever be able to sleep with Steve Rogers or even remotely tolerate his ceaseless shifting and clinging.

 

But he could… because he was used to it.

 

And when he woke up with his oldest friend’s nose embedded in his neck and arms wrapped around his shoulders and legs entangled in his he wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t bitter, and for a long while he just stared at the ceiling, and thought about how nice it was to be held in someone’s arms and not feel even a little bit threatened, or scared, or distrustful.

 

….

 

Natasha was the only one who knew he was there, up in the hollowed out building, watching the fight, a failsafe should something go wrong. She got it, she understood, protecting investments even if they wore tights and were idiots.

 

She didn’t tell anyone, she had no need to.

 

He lay in wait with his sniper, watching the scene play out before him from the window with no glass, watching everything though the scope. Making sure that there was nobody was coming up behind anyone he liked. He hadn’t needed to take any action yet, not in all the trips he had taken with them; they were good at what they did. And he only ever went where Steve went.

 

And Steve wouldn’t have liked it if he knew he was there, so Bucky didn’t tell him, just went along, creeping through the shadows, watching for the men with guns and deadly things, Natasha allowed him to do so.

 

But then, then someone was pointing a gun at Steve’s head and they all stopped, everyone just stopped and the rifle went off in his hands and coldness crawled out of his head and over his skin, making him deadly, making him strong.

 

The man with the gun dropped to the ground and so did his gun, and then, in quick succession, so do the rest of them, hit non-fatally. In the stomach or the legs, letting out groans of pain or shouts of panic and fear.

 

And Steve was looking at him now, following the direction that the bullet had come from, and Bucky looked down at him, peeking out from behind the scope. He gave Steve a thumbs-up and begins to pack up his things, taking apart his rifle and putting it back into it’s case, taking a bus back to the tower.

 

He had no interest with the clean up that would follow or the confrontation that he would receive as soon as Steve found the time to seek him out.

 

He had known it would happen eventually, that someone would make him shoot, it was why he came, to save Steve. To protect the protection.

 

Steve could save the world all he liked, put on a bright suit and smile for the crowds and sit on his perfect little podium of morality, but Bucky, Bucky had been designed to just save Steve.

 

…

 

Steve confronted him.

 

Steve always confronted him eventually.

 

This time he was on the balcony of his room and Steve didn’t knock, he doesn’t need to, he had never needed to. He was reading a book, Cool Cat Clint gave it to him in exchange for one of his leather jackets. He kind of regretted it now; it wasn’t a very good book. Though he did get a lot of gratification about the fact that Bucky looked better in the leather jacket than Cool Cat Clint did.

 

Steve leant on the rail all casual like but Bucky could see the tension in his muscles, see it in the way his set his lips into a decidedly straight line and the way that his eyes were narrowed just a little bit.

 

He opened him mouth.

 

Bucky spoke first.

 

“I remember.”

 

“Huh?”

 

That caught Steve off guard and a flush of grim pleasure rushed through him.

 

“I remember everything.” Steve raised his eyebrows at him. “Ev-ery. Thing.”

 

Realization came over Steve’s face and he suddenly looked like he really needed to sit down. Bucky just liked the way he looked against the skyline. Liked the way the sun shone through his hair and reflected and Steve was having a crisis, but Bucky just thought he was beautiful.

 

He stood, brushing himself off and putting his things down and then he walked over to him, and smiled because he remembered Steve and Steve remembered him, and he liked Steve. He thought Steve was the greatest thing since sliced bread and Steve Rogers loved him and that was enough.

 

That was enough.

 

And he held gently onto Steve’s collar, and tugged his lips towards his and it was 2015, they could kiss if they so wished and Bucky wished. And Steve, for a moment, was still, stiff beneath him, but then Bucky felt him slowly relax and push back against his mouth. It all coming back to them, all those years that they were brothers, friends at best. But they weren’t, they had transgressed centuries and that was still true, because they were in love, and this was the way that in love people acted.

 

And it was so pleasant and so peaceful and he didn’t even care when Tony yelled from his balcony:

 

“Fucking Finally!”

 


End file.
